Quite a few Rum Rationers like rugby, so I thought I would list the fixtures for the 6 Nations Championship, so that you can make a note of the 'must see' matches (that's a personal choice, of course).

Note that the opening match is Wales v England on the evening of Friday 4th February 2011.

Which of the teams is the in form one at the moment and perhaps a good tip for winning the Championship?

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My heart will always say England, but this year my head agrees!Ireland are on the wane, France are terrible under Marc Lievremont, the sweaties may pull off a surprise or two though. I can't see a grand slam by any of the teams, but England should triumph overall.

My heart will always say England, but this year my head agrees!Ireland are on the wane, France are terrible under Marc Lievremont, the sweaties may pull off a surprise or two though. I can't see a grand slam by any of the teams, but England should triumph overall.

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Got to agree with you there. The French are too inconsistent, never know which French side is going to turn up and Livremont is liable to change the team every game. I can't see them doing England at Twickers, 3 home games on the bounce is a big advantage for England.

England have a shout at the grand slam, Ireland failed to turn up against Italy, and are wavering, the French turned it on against Scotland, but it won't last, I think the Scots will beat Wales tomorrow - they have lost their way a little bit under Gatland now, don't really think they have a chance.

Once Tom Croft is fit again, Johnno is going to have some selection headaches - Wood performed against Wales, he was everywhere, would still pick Croft though, that bloke has got some pace for a back rower. Got plenty of big ball carriers and pace in the back row.

Out of touch with the rugby these days. Apart from the Army v Navy game each year I aint really paid much attention. Used to follow the rugby avidly so maybe this is a good time to get back to watching. England game tomorrow will hopefully be more entertaining than last weekend

watched that last 30 mins of the taffs v jocks........boy were they bad...jocks that is

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Jocks were appalling yesterday. Based on their performance in Paris last week and having the home advantage I thought they'd beat the Welsh yesterday, but they just couldn't finish. And not being able to score a point when the Welsh were down to 13 men - just not good enough!

England vs France will be the deciding game in this years championship IMO. Just need to make sure we take all the chances we get against the froggies.

I'm 'mixed race' - Scots, Irish, English, and Finnish, but I've lived in Scotland for almost 50 years so .......
It was awful to watch, but John Beattie has a few interesting things to say on his BBC Scotland blog if you're interested. Unfortunately BBC Scotland is anti all sports except girlyball - on the website you get 50 pages of girlyball for every one of all other sports, and you'll get more coverage of the Highland league than you do for Glasgow and Edinburgh rugby. The club game is ignored completely, yet clubs like Hawick, Melrose, Ayr and others get bigger crowds than many of Scottish football's 1st Div games (and some of the 'Premiership' !). Take away Rangers and Celtic (please), and the total attendance for ALL Scottish football's clubs is usually less than Man U or Arsenal's average home gate.
Yet BBC Scotland devotes individual web pages to football clubs who think 500 is a big crowd.
The radio's worse - a two hour girlyball programme EVERY night, plus live games and 'specials', with an average of 8 hours solid on Saturday.
All other sport gets 50 minutes at 9am on Saturday (co-hosted by Beattie), and rugby is (unless there's a football match on) allowed 50 minutes on Friday evening.
So the game's dying because the Beeb refuses to cover it.
With only 100 pro players (according to the Pro-Rugby Players Association, England has 2,000), we should never win, but occasionally we sneak one.
England's big problem is believing the London media. They've already won the Grand Slam apparently, and that tends to annoy everyone else. It's still a game where passion and guts plays a big part, and one way of making England lose is to tell them they're bound to win (like Jermy Gussett has a habit of saying).
I think England v France will decide the Championship, and my money's on England.
But if the media do their usual, then someone will beat England - Remember Wales in '99 ? Scotland in 2000/2006/2008 ? last season's draw ? England were told they couldn't lose ........

Concur with Delrick on all your points viz a viz this years tournament.

Being a proud Englishman who is somewhat new to rugby and now no longer live in the UK (ahh, the irony), I have to think of the demoralising effect upon an opposing team to see Toby Flood walking off the pitch (hurrah, they say) only to be replaced by Jonny Wilkinson (oh sh1t)

Wilko's still got it, and I think his defence is even better than it was (and it was always good).
I've got a problem with teams winning without scoring a try though, and every team's done it at one time or another.
The 'best team' doesn't always win, and I think differential penalties would help. Teams today often try to force a scoring penalty, and I personally know at least one top ref who admits he's either been conned, or has made the wrong decision and gifted the game to the weaker, but more 'streetwise' team.
Having played in the front row against Maclauchlan and Carmichael (it still bloody hurts !), I think we need to go back a few years to get the scrums working properly again. Straight put-ins and none of this 'pause .... shake hands....... smile' stuff.
I don't often agree with Brian Moore, but he's spot-on when it comes to the scrums, and he should know (unlike the refs).
I've watched the France/Scotland/penalty try sequence about a dozen times now, and the ref was conned. Not his fault, but I think refs should all attend a week-long course in scrummaging, with BM and a few others showing them what really goes on, and how to spot it. At the moment, refs seem to do a lot of guessing.

Another decent performance by England yesterday. Hope Flood and Sheridan are ok for two weeks time. Didn't see much wrong with Tindals disallowed try - he wasn't held in the tackle and don't see where the double movement was. Ashtons try was a forward pass so can't have any complaints there.

Agree on the scrummaging, its getting silly, the amount of time the refs are leaving before calling engae is geting silly, no need for the 4 calls, 2 will do 'crouch' and 'engage' is all thats needed.

Looking at Englands task ahead now, watching Scotland and Ireland play, not very impressed with either performance and the Irish are giving away a lot of penalties and Scotland just don't seem able to break the line. Exciting finish to the game though with only 3 points in it, but again, all but 3 of the Scottish points coming from Irish indiscipline. Still don't fancy the prospect of Ireland in Ireland though on the final weekend, I think it will be a close game.

I'm really not sure where Scotland are going wrong in their training. The fact is we have good players and some real talent in the team. However, it seems to be the basic things like communication and handling skills that let us down. Robinson really needs to come down hard on those little things in training.

Although I did enjoy the match today, a national-level team with the talent Scotland has shouldn't have to rely on the opposing team making errors to score points!

England's task now is to ignore the London media and pundits like Germy Gusset who are already claiming a Grand Slam (Gusset hasn't said it yet, but he will !). If they start to believe their own publicity, they'll stumble. Again.
Can't see Scotland causing an upset at Twickenham, but Ireland are certainly capable of it in Dublin, and they could nick the Championship. Could very well be the game of the season.

Scotland HAVE broken the line, it's just that there's no-one to offload to when they've done so, and if Ansboro and Lamont pair up in the centre (I'd have ditched De-Whatever years ago), break the line and find one of the Killer Bees or even Gray on their shoulder, then we might upset a few people.

I still say it's about resources though, and hammering a team like Italy with their few dozen pro-players is nothing to shout about.

The French game was very different, and we saw two teams with equal resources (and cash) battling it out. England were deserved winners, and they 'only' have to beat Scotland and Ireland, teams with a tenth of the pro-players (combined) of England.
England shouldn't lose, but if they start to believe that, they will.

I have to agree with Robinson - poor refereeing cost Scotland the game yesterday, and it goes back to what I was saying about the scrums and ref inconsistency.
I've watched the sequence that led up to Chunk's yellow card, and the ref didn't have a clue what was going on. But up in the Radio Scotland commentary box, Peter Wright did (and he should know - he conned enough refs in his day).
Penalising Scotland for 'going up' when they were driving the Irish backwards shows just how little the ref knew about scrummaging and the pressures involved. He also penalised the Scots for not driving straight, and thousands of members of the Front Row Union must have been laughing hysterically (or swearing at the TV, as I was) at that decision !

However, 3 tries to nil, so I suppose the best team won.

But a 13 -4 penalty count, with the '4' resulting in a dodgy YC, and the '13' a bit of 'naughty boy, don't do it again' - so they did, and they did, and they did, but NO card ......
Watch the replay - repeated infringements by the same player at the breakdown (Cian Healey) - and ...... nothing. So they kept doing it.

Got a tenner on Ireland to beat England by less than 10. Now, it's up to the media and Mr Gusset.